


Frozen

by DWEmma



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:57:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DWEmma/pseuds/DWEmma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lizzie agrees to build a snowman in the yard with her, five year-old Lydia Bennett runs off into the suburban snow and finds a cave of kittens, meeting Kitty Bennett for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frozen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littledust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/gifts).



“Wanna build a snowman?”

Nine year old Lizzie Bennett woke to find her five year old sister Lydia sitting on top of her, bouncing a bit.

“WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAN!!”

This second time the question sounded less like an inquiry as to whether or not Lizzie herself wants to build a snowman and more of a statement of fact, that Lydia wants to build a snowman. Lizzie mumbled something indeterminate, and attempted to shove Lydia to the floor.

“Lizzie? Lizzie Lizzie Lizzie Lizzie…” Lydia started to poke her sister with each repetition of her name.

“Go bother Jane, Lydia. I bet she’d LOVE to build a snowman with you,” Lizzie moaned, as she pulled a pillow over her head.

“I already asked Jane, silly. She said she’d rather sit indoors where it is warm and read.” Lydia began to jump up and down on Lizzie’s bed. “But I want to play!!!!!”

“Yeah, well I don’t.” Lizzie shoved Lydia down to a sitting position. “I want to SLEEP.”

“You’re not asleep anymore.” Lydia began to smush Lizzie’s face. “Let’s get up up up! Mommy says that you sleep too much. She says that you act rather like a teenager.”

“And I think people in this family say the word ‘rather’ far too much,” Lizzie moaned, sitting up in bed. She was awake now. There was nothing she could do about it. “Mommy says that either you have to go outside and play in the snow with me, or she’s going to teach you how to needlepoint today. She says that if you can’t entertain your poor younger sister than you can learn how to be a lady.”

And with that, Lizzie got up, pulled on her warm clothes, and went outside. There was no way she was going to be a proper lady on a snowy Saturday morning.

***

Outside, Lizzie and Lydia  built themselves a snowman, and then Lydia insisted on pretending it was her boyfriend and kissed it so many times that it toppled over. At this, she became bored with the game and started making snow angels. She was on her 7th time flopping on her back and manically making a snow angel before she looked back and saw the result of crawling out of the snow angel with no care and then flopping right next to it lets more of a trail of flattened snow than a single snow angel. She considered asking Lizzie why her snow angels didn’t look right, but then she decided she didn’t care, and she picked up some snow, made a ball, tiptoed over to Lizzie, who was sitting on the porch stairs looking off into the distance, and shoved it down the back of her jacket. She ran away giggling maniacally.

Lizzie screamed her sister’s name and ran in her direction, gathering armloads of snow to dump on that annoying brat in revenge when she heard a sharp tapping at an upstairs window in the house. In that window was Jane, shaking her head. Lizzie could almost hear Jane thinking “What an impetuous child” or some other nonsense as they looked at each other. “How dare she think that?” Lizzie thought. Lydia’s the obnoxious one who shoved snow down Lizzie’s coat. If anyone is an impetuous child…

Wow. Jane really knew how to get to her. Jane hadn’t even said anything, and Lizzie was arguing with her in her mind. But really, just because Lydia is only five didn’t give her the right to act like a monster…

Where was that little monster, anyhow? Lizzie looked around the yard, and saw nothing other than a bunch of mashed snow. She really ought to go out looking for her sister…but let’s be honest, this was the suburbs. How much trouble could she get into?

***

Lydia wandered through the snow, drifting from unfenced suburban backyard to backyard. She seemed to have escaped Lizzie’s revenge, but she had run for a while before she realized she wasn’t being followed any more. She had run off like this before, but everything looked different covered in snow, and Lydia wasn’t really sure where she was. “Ha!” she said to no one. “They deserve to lose me for how they all treat me.” Jane had been reading her out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales just the day before, and she imagined herself Cinderella, escaping her evil stepsisters…wait no, Snow White, escaping the Evil Queen…wait no, she was Jorinda, a tiny bird flying away… Lizzie had said that there were fairy tales where really gross things happened, like people eating children and them coming back to life as birds or something, but Jane wouldn’t read her those. Which was a pity, since those ones sounded even better than the ones she had been read. Lydia pulled her sleeve away from her arm and tentatively bit it, to see how she tasted. But it was cold having her arm exposed and wet like that, so she stopped.

It was then that she heard a noise. There was a weird squeaking noise coming from inside of a natural rock formation. She crawled down inside, into a hole really only small enough for someone her size or smaller, and found her way into a cave. And found inside that the noise was coming from a litter of six tiny kittens. Lydia tried to jump for joy at the site of the tiny little baby things, and hit her head on the top of the tiny cave. Rubbing her head, she leaned down over the babies.

“Do you have a mommy?” she asked them, reaching down the scratch their little heads. She waited for an answer. Seems that in a fairy tale, they ought to be able to speak English back to her. She decided to try again, but slower. “Do you have a mommy?” she asked. But there was still only mewling replies. Lydia considered for a second that she might not be in a fairy tale, but then dismissed this idea is crazy. If she weren’t in a fairy tale, why would there be a cave full of kittens?

She decided that she would become the kittens’ mommy, and began to load them into her pockets. They squiggled in complaint, but she said, “Silly kitties, a cave is no good place for you to be all by yourselves. I am your mother and you must listen to me and do exactly as I say.” They didn’t.

She decided she needed a new plan. She took off her scarf and made a little sling for the kittens, and wrapped them up in there. She was able to get a few in, but then they’d struggle out. This was not going very well. Lydia thought about how this would work in the fairy story book. She guessed that there would probably be a fairy or something that would help her magically get the kittens to follow her, or she could play a pipe like the pied piper and they’d just follow! (Though how you made noise come out of Daddy’s smoking pipe was beyond her. She’d tried. All it did was taste terrible and blow black stuff all over. And no rats or children followed her anywhere.)

But it was worth a try. She decided to go back home and get the pipe, and get the kittens to follow her home. She began to back out of the cave…only to find that there she didn’t seem to fit back through the opening.

“I must have grown while I was in here,” Lydia told the kittens. She began to panic. She knew that it didn’t go so very well for Alice when she grew too large for the house she was in. And no one knew where she and the kittens were.

“Any one of you have any ideas?” she asked the kittens. They mewed back at her, pathetically. “Me neither,” she sighed.

***

Meanwhile, Lizzie had gone back inside and was writing in her diary. She was letting all the anger out about how self absorbed Lydia is, not understanding that the whole world didn’t exist to play with her. It felt really good to get it out there. She didn’t even hear when Jane slipped in the room. 

“Um...Lizzie?” Jane upspoke quietly, as she stood by the door. 

“Yeah?” Lizzie replied, not really looking up from her writing. 

“Was Lydia with you? Because the two of you went outside to play a few hours ago, and I haven’t heard her voice in a while...” Jane trailed off, looking at Lizzie pointedly. 

“I’m not her owner, Jane,” Lizzie shot back. “I don’t know what she does with her time. She’s probably playing in her closet or something.” 

“Um, Lizzie, she’s not anywhere in the house. I’ve looked. Did she come inside with you?”   
Lizzie looked at the clock and realized that she’d been writing for over an hour. And that no, last she had seen Lydia she had been running off into the snow. And that maybe this was a thing that she might want to start worrying about. But looking at Jane’s forehead creases, it seems that Jane had a head start on worrying for the both of them. And if Lydia had run off into the snow and gotten lost...that might be her fault. Which was bad. Which was something that she shouldn’t worry about until they knew more about the situation. So she wouldn’t worry yet. 

Lizzie sighed. “Let’s get our coats. We probably should start looking for her.” 

***

Lydia was starting to get cold. The she had covered herself in the kittens, like a blanket of kittens, but that didn’t seem to be helping. Plus, they tickled when they moved around. Which was funny. But not warm making. Every once in a while she saw if she had shrunk down any and could fit back out of the door. But she hadn’t. But luckily she didn’t show signs of getting any bigger, either, so that was a relief. 

“It’s okay kitties, we’ll get out of here somehow,” Lydia comforted the kittens. The smallest one mewed back at her. “Meow to you, too, Kitty. Oh! I should name you!” she exclaimed. She looked at each of the kitties, very seriously. One she named Fanny, since her bottom was a different color than the rest of her. The next she named Lady, since she was pretty sure it was a girl cat. She decided if there was a lady, there should be a Lord, so she picked one that seemed like a boy to her. She named another Duchess, another Duke...these fairy tale books were really paying off for cat names! She stared at the final one, the small one she had just been talking to before. She decided to go simple with this one and call her just Kitty. Short for Catherine. 

“All right, cat family!” Lydia announced. “I am cold. We need to figure out how to get out of here before spring comes and melts the snow all over us.” Lydia knew that she would surely starve to death, or at least have to go potty before spring came, but she didn’t want the kitties to be scared, so she didn’t tell them that part. “So I need you to help me get out of here. Any ideas?” She waited for the cats to show her the button to the secret passage out of there. Or something. Now that they had names, surely they’d be more helpful. But they just crawled all over each other and her, mewing adorably. The power of cuteness did not show the way out. 

Well it was up to her. She closed her eyes, and used her mind to reach out to Jane, to tell her to come find her. “There,” she told the kitties. “Jane will come for me.” 

***

Jane and Lizzie were starting to get cold and tired, and they were also starting to lose their voices from calling out Lydia’s name so many times. 

“Maybe we should go back home and get mom to help,” Jane said, nervously. 

“No, that’s a terrible idea, and let me explain why,” said Lizzie. She readjusted her winter hat to look more like a proper lady hat. “Oh Jane! Oh Lizzie! How could you! How could you lose my dearest, youngest, cutest child. I will now monologue to you for the next hour about how ir-responsible you are, rather than actually going outside and looking for my poor darling baby.” 

“Oh Lizzie,” Jane laughed nervously. “She wouldn’t really do that.” Jane wasn’t sure she believed herself. So she called out Lydia’s name and kept on walking. 

***

Lydia heard her name! It was Jane! Her mental powers from an hour earlier had summoned her sister! She had magical powers! She yelled back, “Jane! JANE! IT’S ABOUT TIME!”   
Jane heard the sound of Lydia’s voice coming from underneath a mound of snow. She gracefully glided to the snow mound, but she saw no entrance. But she did hear a lot of mewing. “Lydia? Are you in there?” 

“Yeah! We’re in here but I got bigger and now me and the magical kitties can’t get out,” Lydia’s muffled voice explained from under the snow.   
Jane looked at Lizzie with panicked concern on her face. 

 “Lydia?” asked Lizzie, carefully. “Are you okay?” 

“I just said that we’re fine but I grew and now we’re stuck,” the exasperated little voice came out of the snow. 

“Um, who’s we?” Lizzie was pretty sure that Lydia had gone insane from cold, and maybe that might be her fault. 

“Me and Fanny and Duke and Duchess and Lady and Lord and KITTY. Duh!” Lydia’s voice sighed. “And you can meet them if you help me figure out how to shrink back to my normal size. 

“Should we get the police? Or the firemen?” Jane asked, nervously. 

“Or the funny farm?” Lizzie quipped back. 

Lydia’s voice piped back: “Kitties aren’t for farms. That’s only cows and chickens and pigs.” Kitty let out a big meow. 

Lizzie looked at Jane. “Oh. She found kittens. And crawled in. And now she’s stuck.” 

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Lydia sounded even more exasperated. 

Lizzie got down on her hands and knees and started to dig the snow around her sister’s voice, and soon found the entrance. She instructed her exactly how to back her way out of the hole, and when she did, she took one glance at Lizzie, who was now soaking wet from the snow, and ran to Jane, who was standing nearby, sort of dithering helplessly during the whole ordeal. “Thank you for saving me, Jane! I knew you’d hear my head cries!” Lydia kissed her sister over and over. 

Lizzie gave her ungrateful sister the stink eye, and looked into the snow cave and did, indeed, find Lady and Lord and Duke and Duchess and Fanny and Kitty. She reached in there and pulled each one out, crying out in pain as they scratched her in annoyance of being removed from their nest into the cold wind.   
Jane and Lydia were hugging, Jane assuring Lydia that she would always find her if she ever got lost again, and barely noticed when Lizzie said, “Ahem?” They just kept doting on each other. 

“Ahem! Oh sisters of mine!” Lizzie tapped both on the shoulder, and plopped one kitten in the hand of both sisters. “We’re going to go back home and be warm. And save the kittens. Okay?” And they all walked back to the house, the kittens snuggling against Jane and Lydia, and the last two biting and scratching at Lizzie. Why she had to pick the nippy ones for herself was a mystery she would never solve. 

***

Later that night, after Lydia was given a bath, they were all warming by the fire, playing with the kittens. They all had favorites, but the runt of the litter was Lydia’s favorite, and since she had found the kittens, her mother told her that she would be allowed to choose which one they would keep. Lizzie had wanted Fanny, and Jane had fallen in love with Lord, but Lydia only had eyes for Kitty. That night, Lydia brought Kitty into her bed with her, and as she fell asleep, she mumbled, “Kitty Bennett, you’re the sister I always wanted.”


End file.
